INSTINCT, SENSATION, AND INTELLIGENCE, 



The lamb sucks, the chicken pecks, and the nestling of the sparrow gapes. 

 In like manner, the mother secretes or selects its food from an instinctive 

 stiiliulus alone. The udder of the dam swells and becomes painful, the 

 crop of the pigeon does the same ; and there are some birds, whose 

 common food is grain, that during this season devour for their young, spi- 

 ders, and other insects, which nothing could induce them to touch at any 

 other time. This sweet intercourse of natural action lays a foundation for 

 something that in a short time shows itself to be superior to instinct, though 

 it has often, but erroneously, been so denominated. The young of two 

 different mothers, if interchangel^ as soon as they are born or hatched, are 

 as satisfied with the foster or suppositious as with the natural parent ; and 

 the mothers, unless made suspicious of the deception, are as satisfied with 

 their foster or suppositious young. But let the same interchange be at- 

 tempted a week or a month afterwards, and in no case will it succeed. 

 Short as has been the intervening period, there has been a birth of feeling 

 as well as a growth of form; the rising sense has united itself with the 

 already mature instinct ; and the natural nurse and the natural, nurshng 

 will pine equally, if separated from each other. 



The poet we have just adverted to, who may pre-eminently be called the 

 poet of nature, has beautifully illustrated this remark by the yearning af- 

 fection of the cow for her young calf when it has strayed from her, or she 

 has been robbed of it ; hunting after it with intense anxiety in every di- 

 rection, mourning for it with a cry that cannot fail to win<3 itself into every 

 feeling heart, and equally refusing the fattening glebe and the refreshing 

 stream.^ The female Dugong or sea-cow of the Sumatra coast, whose 

 general history we have already given a glance at,t evinces a Hke degree 

 of maternal afiection ; insomuch that when its young has been entrapped 

 or speared, the mother pursues it so closely and so fearlessly as to be taken 

 with the greatest ease. The young sea-calves have a short, sharp, 

 pitiable cry, which they frequently repeat ; and, like the stricken deer, are 

 I also said to shed tears, which. Sir Thomas Raffles tells us, are carefully 

 I preserved by the common people as a charm, the possession of which is 

 j supposed to secure the affections of those to whom they are attached in 

 I the same manner as they attract the mother to her young-J 

 j ' The instinct of this early age, however, belongs to such early age alone, 

 I find to the purpose of such early age alone : and when it has answered 

 that purpose it ceases, and we meet with no more trace of it : but the 

 feeling which follows so close upon it, and to which perhaps it has given 

 I birth, is of a higher order, and continues for a much longer period of time ; 

 ! and for a period of time, indeed, directly proportioned to its intensity, or 

 in other words, to the ascending rank of sentient or percipient life in 

 which it makes its appearance. 



Hence in the two lowest classes of animals, we meet with nothing of 

 the sort whatever : the young of insects and worms having a foreign food 

 provided for them without the intervention of the mother : and hence, too, 

 in various quadrupeds and birds the feeling progressively dies away as the 

 young become independent ; while in man we behold the principle of in- 

 telligence, in its most lovely and interesting character, a moral and internal 

 feeling, a sense of gratitude and veneration on the one side, of keen com- 

 placency and delight on the other, and of active affection on both, catching 

 hold of the two preceding principles, and producing a strong cord of in- 

 terunion that can never be broken but with the cords of the heart itself, 



■* De Rer, Nat. ii, t Ser, II. Lect. II. p. 205, X Phil. Trans, 1820. p. ISh 



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